Diver missing at Ginnie?

[ginti]

I tell my students that it is true that breathing the wrong gas at the wrong depth is one of the leading causes of death for technical divers, but in the overwhelming majority of those cases, the error actually took place on land. During the dive, the divers think they are doing the right thing, but the content of the bottle is not what they think it is.

Very interesting.

I always thought that in this kind of accident, the diver usually took the wrong bottle underwater without realising it (in other words, the bottle was marked correctly); this is an essential factor if we want to understand how to improve safety. It would be interesting to read a report that analyses:
- how many accidents involved incorrect marking of the bottles;
- how many accidents happened despite correct marking.
Are you aware of anything like that?

 

[Trace Malinowski]

There are problems with "just the facts" mantra, as I discovered in my history of writing reports on cave diving incidents (which includes near fatalities as well as fatalities). The most important is that in cases where the facts are in dispute, publishing only what you know for sure can paint an inaccurate picture. The Paul Newman/Sally Field movie Absence of Malice creates a prime example showing how a factual report on a small part of a complex situation can lead to an erroneous conclusion.

I ran into this more than a few times. When the facts are in dispute and you publish only what you know for sure, you can create a picture even you do not believe. In one example, only two people know what happened at a certain point in a dive. Each person told me what happened at length, and what they said was completely different. One said something I won't name happened, and the other said it did not happen. The person who said it happened was only a small part of the full story, which was essentially about what happened to the other guy. That other guy not only said it did not happen, he said we could not use anything he told me if we included that person's version, he would sue. I believe he was lying because the facts would be embarrassing. NSS decided not to include anything related to that part of the dive. So we omitted everything about what the other person said, and he is the one I believe was telling the truth. By omitting everything in dispute, we essentially corroborated what we believed to be a lie.

If we were a police agency, we could write all that out without fear of a lawsuit. Not being a police agency, we could not.

I agree. My DPV conked out in Manatee, and another cave instructor with whom I was diving and I tried to figure out the problem. While we were busy with that, we thought the guideline we were referencing was the mainline. Unbeknownst to us, we were sucked into the Milk tunnel. We got my scooter working (still don't know why it quit), and returned to diving. He was leading when we came to a definite "Toto, we aren't in Kansas anymore, "moment. We realized we were on the wrong line.

At that point, I began to lead out. If you asked him, he would claim that I was so scared I sped off and left him. What had actually happened was I forgot, or we forgot (since he was my back-up brain), to speed match the scooters after we fiddled with the switch, speed control, and prop to investigate the cause of the abrupt stall. I didn't notice he was gone until I reached the jump. It wasn't a long time on full trigger on an XK1, but enough to break the team. We figured the mismatched speed out when trying to find the mainline together.

Even two guys on the same dive will see it differently since we aren't running comms.

 

[kensuf]

I believe the fear of lawsuits is overblown. As mentioned you literally can't defame a dead person in the US. Heck even ongoing defamation lawsuits may not survive the death of the plaintiff.

When was the last cave diving related death lawsuit? Was there a lawsuit over Daisy's death in 2019? How about Tom's death last year? And even if there was one, nothing is going to stop the counsels from subpoenaing the people involved in the recovery, and having to be deposed or having to testify.

So I'm not sure what they are protecting by not publicly releasing the reports that involve a death. And the truth as you know it is a defense against defamation cases involving living people.

Oooh oooh ooh! I can weigh in on this.

In the USA you can be sued pretty much for anything. Whether the suit actually results in the plaintiff gaining anything is a different matter (the case could be thrown out for being frivolous), but the defendant should probably seek some legal counsel. That costs money and time (and for most of us, probably incurs stress).

My boss is currently being sued in court over an employment issue. The plaintiff does not have a snowballs chance in hell of winning, and the case is probably going to get thrown out, but my boss has had to spend time and money to defend himself. My boss would be entitled to counter-sue, but there is still that lost time and money.

 

[PfcAJ]

IUCRR is a net negative for cave diving.

The leadership needs to be replaced or the org disbanded completely and replaced with a group that actually works to help all of us gain the info to be safer.

IUCRR does not have a monopoly on skills.

 

[beldridg]

I agree. My DPV conked out in Manatee, and another cave instructor with whom I was diving and I tried to figure out the problem. While we were busy with that, we thought the guideline we were referencing was the mainline. Unbeknownst to us, we were sucked into the Milk tunnel. We got my scooter working (still don't know why it quit), and returned to diving. He was leading when we came to a definite "Toto, we aren't in Kansas anymore, "moment. We realized we were on the wrong line.

At that point, I began to lead out. If you asked him, he would claim that I was so scared I sped off and left him. What had actually happened was I forgot, or we forgot (since he was my back-up brain), to speed match the scooters after we fiddled with the switch, speed control, and prop to investigate the cause of the abrupt stall. I didn't notice he was gone until I reached the jump. It wasn't a long time on full trigger on an XK1, but enough to break the team. We figured the mismatched speed out when trying to find the mainline together.

Even two guys on the same dive will see it differently since we aren't running comms.

(NB: I know this is off-topic from the original post so we can move the topic of accident reporting to a new thread if needed.)

In your above summary, there is a clear fact to get reported that the divers got separated and that can be reported.

The "why" might be in dispute. In which case, the report could either state the the diver testimonies don't match and give a summary of each or just say that there is conflicting testimony on the "why."

Do you think that when police officers take a report they don't receive conflicting testimony? And yet, a report is still filed.

I see no reason that we can't publish diving accident reports. How many other "sports" do publish them?

Sky Diving / Parachuting: Incident Reports
Mountaineering: AAC Publications
Flying: https://www.faa.gov/data_research/accident_incident/

The list goes on.

Some are formal government organizations so the "threat" of a lawsuit is potentially not as valid. But some are not.

In any field I can possibly think of, a large part of learning is learning by mistakes.

I just watched "Return to Space" and one of things Elon Musk mentions is that all of those original crashes of the rocket helped them perfect it before they put two humans in it. I think he even explicitly mentions that they could not succeed without deeply analyzing the painful early failures.

- brett

 

[Manatee Diver]

Oooh oooh ooh! I can weigh in on this.

In the USA you can be sued pretty much for anything. Whether the suit actually results in the plaintiff gaining anything is a different matter (the case could be thrown out for being frivolous), but the defendant should probably seek some legal counsel. That costs money and time (and for most of us, probably incurs stress).

True, but the people involved probably have a greater liability in their professional roles (as many are involved in the industry). Compared to that liability a groundless lawsuit seems pretty minor.

 

[boulderjohn]

Are you aware of anything like that?

I am going off of my years reading reports. I know of no formal study. Here are two such cases I know of.

• The diver was preparing to dive at Ginnie Springs, and had a stage clearly marked "oxygen." When others asked him about it, he said he had filled the bottle himself, and it contained air. People insisted he check it. He refused angrily and dived. It contained oxygen.
• The diver was preparing for a dive but broke his foot. He had a long layoff while it healed. When he recovered, he did a dive to the wreck Hydro Atlantic in Boca Raton, with a deck at about 150 feet and the sand at 170. He remembered that his doubles had air in them when he had planned the dive before the injury. He didn't check. They had EANx 36.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I believe the fear of lawsuits is overblown. As mentioned you literally can't defame a dead person in the US.

A clever lawyer might be able to come up with more causes of action to plead than just defamation. And different states have different laws.

 

[DandyDon]

(the case could be thrown out for being frivolous), but the defendant should probably seek some legal counsel. That costs money and time (and for most of us, probably incurs stress).

As happened to Scubaboard itself a few years back.

 

[boulderjohn]

As happened to Scubaboard itself a few years back.

ScubaBoard was sued for posts people made on a thread about a fatality. Part of the lawsuit called for ScubaBoard to reveal the true names of the people who posted on the thread so they could be sued individually as well. It was a seriously big deal.

People seem to be thinking that lawsuits all relate to actions of the deceased. They could also relate to the actions of anyone associated with the dive who may be blamed. In the ScubaBoard lawsuit, it was a dive operation that sued because of the implication they were at fault for the fatality.

In a cave diving death a few years ago, NSS-CDS was sued for not being vigilant enough to keep unqualified divers out of an advanced site they owned. That lawsuit dragged on and on, with the NCC-CDS lawyers charging their monthly fees. It almost ended the NSS-CDS existence.